I am an anthropologist and a PhD Candidate at the environmental humanities project "Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750-2020", led by professor Kyrre Kverndokk (cultural studies).

My PhD project "Staging Wilderness" explores human-muskox-reindeer relations in the Norwegian national park Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella and looks into how wilderness is staged and performed through practices of conservation, national park management, tourism, photography and wild reindeer hunting. 

I am doing an ethnographic case study of the national park Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella in central Norway. This area has been under protection since the early 20th century and is interesting for several reasons: It is of utmost symbolic value to the nation of Norway and was used in the oath sworn when the Norwegian Constitution was established; it has been protected for having some of the most unique types of nature Norway has to offer; the ancient animal musk ox was (re-)introduced in the area in the 1930s – an animal that had not lived there since before the last ice age but is now seen as one of the key species in the park; one of the few remaining wild rendeer herds in the world lives here; and parts of the landscape has been used for military training and has now been sought restored back to an imagined “natural” state. All these elements are interesting aspects of the social production of this landscape and the shifting notions of what this landscape has been viewed as. They are also interesting examples of different techniques of “purifying” nature and protecting it from the “unpure”. A particular focus in my project will be to gain knowledge of the different imaginaries and visions of ‘nature’ that has governed these practices, both historically and contemporarily, as processes being part of what has led to the Anthropocene.

The project adds important new knowledge and perspectives not only about Dovrefjell as an area, but also about how humans and other species are relating to the environment and to each other, and about how wilderness is not simply something to be found ‘out there’, as something objectively existing. Instead, it is something that is made and constantly re-made through performance and practices. On a more general level, my research can say something about what type of nature is deemed valid for protection and what is not. Additionally, my work ties into current debates about the right to roam and how to safeguard the red-listed wild reindeer, which furthermore relates to topics of extinction and nature crisis.

I hold a MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen from 2014, where I wrote about national identity in Iceland with focus on understandings and meanings of landscape, nature and sense of place - focusing on the national park Thingvellir. 

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Lillevold, K. & Haarstad, H. (2019). The deep city: cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable local transformation, Local Environment, 24:4, s. 329-341

Lillevold, Karin (2014). “Visdom hører steder til”. En studie om landskap og stedliggjøring av islandskhet. Master’s thesis, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen.